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United States: Breaking out of the two-party (ballot) box

By Jen Roesch

June 24, 2014 -- Socialist Worker (US) -- Nearly six years into Barack Obama's neoliberal presidency, there are
growing signs of discontent within the Democrats' traditional voting
base. While both of Obama's electoral wins can be attributed to the
turnout of young, female, Black, Latino/a and working-class voters,
these are precisely the groups that have most suffered from the economic
crisis and his administration's commitment to austerity. This is part
of the reason why, for the first time since 2000, there is a space
opening up in mainstream politics to the left of the Democratic Party.

In Seattle, socialist Kshama Sawant's campaign for the city council was
able to gain support from constituencies, including some unions, that
would normally support the Democratic Party. In Lorain County, Ohio, union
activists angered by their local DemocraticParty mayor and city council broke
ranks and ran their own independent slate of two dozen labour
candidates--nearly all of whom won.
This represents a flexing of labour muscle in the face of Democratic
Party betrayal, rather than a firm break, but it points to the potential
working-class audience for an independent political alternative.

These are relatively small and localised examples, but they reflect a
real and growing frustration and impatience that reaches beyond the
radical left into the US working class. Sawant's victory in
Seattle may have been aided by the support of a hip indy newspaper and a
base of lefty volunteers, but her campaign themes were solidly working
class, and her votes came overwhelmingly from households making less than $40,000 a year.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio remains a solidly committed
Democrat, but his "tale of two cities" campaign also reflected an
economically populist break away from the status quo.

What direction all this takes remains to be seen. While space is
opening up for independent political challenges, progressives who see
possibilities for creating a left-wing within the Democratic Party will
also step forward. Adolph Reed's recent article "Nothing Left" criticising liberals' commitment to the Democrats was a cover story for Harper's and led to an interview on Bill Moyers' show.

That his argument can get this kind of attention is a sign of the opening that exists. But Michelle Goldberg's response
accusing Reed of electoral nihilism gives just a taste of the pushback
from liberals that will develop as we approach the 2016 elections.

The stranglehold of the two-party system has, along with racism, been
a main obstacle to the development of working-class consciousness and
organisation in the US. It has meant that the mainstream political
debate has remained incredibly narrow, conducted on terms largely
acceptable to the capitalist class, and it has created an inevitable
pressure on social movements to adapt to the "politics of the possible".

If social and labour movements are to break out of this cycle, it will
have to mean an actual break to the left of the Democratic Party. While
some of the developments in the most recent electoral cycle are
encouraging, this is by no means an easy task.

Ralph Nader

The last time there was a significant electoral challenge to the left
of the Democratic Party was Ralph Nader's presidential campaign in 2000.
While Nader was no socialist, he consistently and successfully
challenged the two-party system from a national platform, garnering
close to 3 million votes. While this was a small share of the ballots
cast, he managed to impact the national debate and inject left-wing
issues into an otherwise narrow discussion. At the height of his
campaign, he spoke to an audience of more than 20,000 at Madison Square
Garden.

There were two factors that shaped the development and popularity of
that campaign. First, two terms of a neoliberal Democrat in office had
produced a reservoir of discontent, especially among young people. This
prompted large numbers of voters (or would-be voters) to look leftward
in search of new alternatives.

But what really galvanised the Nader challenge and gave it the
feeling of a movement was the global justice fight that had first
erupted on the streets of Seattle at the World Trade Organization
protests less than a year earlier. The Nader campaign represented a
social movement, which was at that point on the ascendance, finding
electoral expression--"Seattle goes to the polls," as some put it at the
time.

Today, we are also in the second term of a neoliberal Democrat who
has frustrated and failed expectations. And we are five years into an
economic crisis in which both mainstream political parties have pursued a
program of austerity. In this context, left-wing--and even
socialist--campaigns can tap into this frustration.

At the same time, many of the struggles that have inspired people in
recent years have run up against challenges or been outright defeated.
So electoral initiatives are less a reflection of a movement on the
offensive than an attempt by the left to find a different avenue by
which to give political expression to the radicalisation that we know
exists.

This context explains the widespread enthusiasm and discussion on the
left about electoral possibilities in the wake of Sawant's victory. But
it also speaks to some of the challenges we face. It is tempting to see
electoral work as an easier avenue of political activity or a shortcut
to broadcasting a left-wing message to a much larger audience. Both of
these things can be true, but there are two questions that must be
considered as we attempt to develop our electoral strategy.

First, we have to recognise that the favourable conditions that
existed for the Sawant campaign are not easily replicated. These
include: highly favourable election laws (nonpartisan elections that
allow candidates to run without party affiliation), the ability to run
for any open council seat on a citywide basis and mail-in ballots (this
last factor became decisive in the campaign's final days); the lack of a
Republican Party challenger, which typically gives Democrats a means to
demand a lesser-evil vote from their base; and strong grassroots
movements and organisations that could be tapped for support.

Relatedly, we need to think through the relationship between
potential electoral initiatives and grassroots social struggles.
Electoral work needs to be understood as one part of a process of
rebuilding working class confidence, consciousness, and combativeness.

Given the relatively small forces of the left, we need to ask some
hard questions, even if there are viable options for a campaign: Will
directing energy into an electoral campaign help to give confidence,
advance and project existing struggles and the broader resistance, or
will it act as either a substitute for those struggles or a drain on
limited resources?

In most cases, independent campaigns are unlikely to actually win.
Therefore, in the majority of situations, the primary goals are to raise
the need for a political break with the Democratic Party, to amplify and
strengthen existing movements, and to engage a wider audience in
left-wing ideas.

Even in cases where independent candidates are able to win, like in
Seattle, success can't be measured on the usual terms of bourgeois
politics, such as making deals to pass legislation or building alliances
with other legislators. Instead, the challenge will be to use this
platform to give confidence and support to struggles and to create a
left-wing pole of attraction within mainstream politics. Thus far,
Sawant has shown the ability to take advantage of precisely that
potential.

Discussions

Given these considerations, there are active discussions in a number
of places about how to take advantage of the audience for independent
politics.

In New York, Teamster and long-time labour and environmental activist
Howie Hawkins is running for governor on the Green Party ticket. He has
teamed up with long-time educator and socialist Brian Jones to run a
campaign that puts forward a defense of public education, the fight for
racial justice and working-class demands like the fight for a $15 per
hour minimum wage.

Hawkins is running against Rob Astorino, a far-right Republican with
no real chance of winning, and front-runner Andrew Cuomo, the current
governor and a right-wing Democrat with presidential ambitions. Cuomo
spent his first term attacking public-sector unions, undermining funding
for public hospitals and pursuing an education deform agenda that
funded charter schools, pushed high-stakes testing and undermined public
schools.

This has created an enormous reserve of anger, which was reflected in
a Sienna poll conducted in April that showed 24 percent of respondents
favouring an unnamed Working Families Party candidate over Cuomo.

The Working Families Party, while nominally independent, has
consistently cross-endorsed Democrats (and sometimes Republicans) on its
ballot line--including Cuomo when he ran for his first term. This year,
there was a bitter fight within the party about whether to break ranks
and run an independent candidate.

Since the fight resulted in a decision to endorse Cuomo
for a second term, there is a live debate among progressives and union
activists about whether now is the time for a genuine political
alternative to the two parties. This has opened up a significantly wider
political space to the left of the Democrats, and it's one that the
Hawkins-Jones campaign aims to fill.

There are interesting developments taking place in Chicago that show
both the range of possibilities and challenges in the electoral arena.
This is not surprising--the Chicago teachers' strike
of 2012 was one of the most successful in recent memory. The Chicago
Teachers Union (CTU) was able to build successful rank-and-file
organisations in schools across the city as well as build alliances with
students and parents fighting for their schools.

This brought them into a direct confrontation both with Democratic
Party Mayor Rahm Emanuel and with the education reform agenda pushed by the
Obama administration. When Emanuel responded to the successful strike by
pressing forward to close a record 50 schools, it raised much more
centrally the question of a political alternative.

What electoral forms this developing resistance will take remains an
open question. Perhaps the clearest expression of these dynamics is the campaign of Tim Meegan for city council in Chicago's 33rd Ward.

Meegan is a social studies teacher and rank-and-file activist in the
CTU. He is running as an independent on three main planks: fully funded,
quality public schools for all students; economic justice including a
$15 per hour minimum wage; and an end to privatisation of city assets
and services. The campaign has arisen organically from the education
battles in Chicago and seeks to use an election campaign as a vehicle
for further movement building.

At the same time, the Chicago Socialist Campaign--a project mainly
involving forces of the organised left--sought to build on the Sawant
experience by mounting an explicitly socialist campaign. Unlike the
Sawant campaign, this was an attempt to draw together both unaffiliated
progressives and socialists from different organisations into a common
effort.

After much discussion, activists have organised to support Jorge Mujica's campaign
for city council in the heavily immigrant and working-class
neighbourhood of Pilsen. Mujica was one of the main organisers of the
2006 mass marches for immigrant rights in Chicago. His campaign is
rooted in existing community struggles and networks of activists, and
hopes to amplify those struggles through the electoral arena. At the
same time, it is also raising a broader challenge to the two-party
system and doing so as an openly socialist campaign.

Break with the Democratic Party

The iniatives described thus far are all at the local and state
level. At this point, they are still driven by progressives hoping to
take advantage of some of the current openings. They are also still
highly dependent on specific local conditions that allow a third-party
run to be viable.

These local campaigns, be they Green, independent or socialist, can
play an important role in giving political expression to the
radicalisation that exists, bringing together different forces on the
left and raising confidence. But they do not yet represent either a
significant break from the Democratic Party or the basis for a national
third-party challenge.

There are signs that political conditions are creating the potential
for this kind of development, but it is a much more challenging
proposition than simply running candidates in local races with favourable
conditions. The process of such a break will not be straightforward,
and will likely proceed in fits and starts.

The recent resolution of the Chicago Teachers Union to form an
Independent Political Organization (IPO) that will "enable a broad
multitude of diverse organisations to establish a pipeline for candidate
development to identify and train people who are part of our movements
to become elected officials" gives a window into some of the prospects,
as well as the challenges. This resolution clearly represents the
political development of the public education fight in Chicago and a
desire to pose a challenge to the Democratic Party machine, through
developing candidates who will be accountable to the union and to
movements.

But the initiative runs right up against the questions of the
two-party system. Earlier this year, the CTU endorsed two Democratic
candidates for the Illinois legislature: Will Guzzardi, who won, and Jay
Travis, who did not. Both candidates were clearly as far left as you
can get in the Democratic Party, had strong support in their
communities, and have been active in important grassroots struggles.

But Travis' campaigning and Guzzardi's victory as Democrats won't do
anything to help develop an independent political alternative. Campaigns
by these kinds of candidates have been a traditional mechanism by which
the Democratic Party absorbs activists into its ranks and attempts to
co-opt emerging struggles. Christine Quinn, for example, who lost the
Democrats' New York City mayoral nomination to Bill de Blasio because of
her identification with Michael Bloomberg, started her career as a
grassroots LGBT activist with extensive connections to local struggles.

Once in office, left-wing activists who try to carry on their
struggle while representing the Democratic Party ultimately end up
having to choose between making deals with and accommodations to the
existing power structure, or becoming marginalised and unable to
accomplish their goals.

This does not mean that the CTU initiative should be dismissed by the
left. It represents the initial cracks in the Democrat Party's' traditional
base and is, therefore, an important development. If anything, it shows
that the tasks for the left are much more challenging than simply
running successful campaigns on our own terms.

It requires a commitment to engage with the broader forces that are
starting to explore what genuine political independence, and power,
could look like. It grows out of some of the same conditions that gave
rise to the independent labour campaign in Lorain, Ohio. As social
struggles develop, we may see more places where activists who have
previously been tied to the Democratic Party begin to question that
commitment.

One example of this is in Oakland, Calif., where long-time civil rights attorney Dan Siegel is running for mayor.
Both Siegel and the current mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan, were
socialists who entered the Democratic Party in the wake of Jesse
Jackson's 1984 Rainbow Coalition in an attempt to pull the party to the
left.

Quan's use of police repression against Occupy Oakland in the fall of
2011 aptly demonstrated that it was the party that changed Quan and not
Quan who changed the party. This prompted Siegel to publicly split with
Quan and rally to the defense of the victims of numerous police
assaults.

Siegel has deregistered from the Democratic Party and decided to run
as an independent. His campaign is highlighting the key issues facing
working-class people and people of colour in Oakland, and has inspired
and organised activists from movements ranging from Occupy to the fight
against police violence.

However, he has not yet made the need for a political break with the
Democratic Party central to his campaign publicity. The extent to which this
campaign can take a step towards organising Oakland's vibrant activist
community into a formation independent of the Democrats will depend
precisely on addressing this question.

Meanwhile in Richmond, California, veteran labour radical Mike Parker is running for mayor,
as two-term Green Party Mayor Gayle McGlaughlin is being termed out. As
these are both non-partisan races, the thorny question of what exactly
constitutes independence from the Democrats will have to be worked out
in practice.

These developments are still in embryonic form, and it is difficult
to predict whether they will grow in the near future. We should
encourage them and, in cases of genuinely independent runs, look to
supporting such campaigns. And we should continue to participate in and
initiate discussions within labour and other social movements about the
need for an independent political alternative.

But we also need to understand that a credible, national third-party
alternative will not emerge in this country simply from the accumulation
of a series of successful local races. Nor will it be the result of
increasing unity on the left and an agreement of a diverse array of
progressive forces to back a national challenge (though this would
certainly be a good thing).

Break the two-party system

If our goal is a political break from the two-party system, this will
require that substantial forces that would normally vote for the
Democrats decide to break ranks.

The development of the conditions that would make this possible will
require efforts that go beyond the ballot box. The political basis for
such a break will likely develop through struggles that confront the
Democratic Party in power. The CTU is one such example, and the fight
for public education generally is in direct contest with the Obama
administration's reform agenda.

But it is not the only arena. Environmental activists have been
battling the Obama administration to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. Thus
far, they have been successful in winning delays on the decision, but
each round of struggle has raised questions about Obama and the
Democratic Party as a whole.

Immigrant rights activists are increasingly targeting deportations as
Obama has deported record numbers of immigrants in the last five years.
These struggles, and others like them, have the potential to drive
participants towards third-party alternatives while also increasing
confidence and militancy.

The Sawant victory in Seattle has shown the potential for electoral
campaigns to give political expression to and advance such struggles. It
has laid down a marker and raised expectations on the left and beyond.
But it would be a mistake to conclude that the next step is simply
increased engagement in electoral campaigns.

At the moment, the prospects of such campaigns remain localised, and
their potential needs to be individually assessed. But our sights must
also stay focused on developing struggles that can rebuild working-class
organisation and confidence.

Within these struggles, we should be looking for every opportunity,
including electoral opportunities, to build a stronger, more coherent
and politically independent left. By doing this work now, we can begin
to expand our horizons--and the mainstream political debate--beyond the
narrow confines set by the two-party system.

[Jennifer Roesch is an activist with the International Socialist Organization in New York City.]